Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 00:40:23 +0000
From: Guy Trache <pfantazm@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Procurers 1.10

The Procurers - Part 10

By Pfantazm

~~~

Author's Note:  This story contains depictions of the future.  If they are
proved to be inaccurate several hundred years from now, enh, that's
science fiction for you.

The characters in this story have unprotected sex, with the basic
assumption that anything that can do them in will have been cured by the
time the story takes place.  If you think you can hang on that long
(especially given the previous disclaimer about accuracy), then, by all
means, follow their example.  Otherwise, stay safe.

Direct interpersonal contact is feasible via pfantazm@hotmail.com.  To
access and review other documents of a similar derivation to the one
herein, locate the relevant directory at
www.pridesites.com/pfantazm/index.html.

A couple of other things before I continue the story.  (You've waited this
long, what a minute or two more.)

First, I'd like to thank Marty H. for the gentle prod in the ass that got
this story going again.  (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)  If he hadn't
e-mailed me, I don't know when I would have turned my attention back to
writing.  The dam is broken, and hopefully creativity will flow again.

Secondly, there's this other guy, see?  He's an author at Nifty too,
writing in the Gay Incest category exclusively so far, and he's going by
"Phangasm".  Obviously, this person doesn't spell his name as badly as I
spell mine.  Just as obvious is the fact that he ain't me, and I ain't
him.  Nothing personal, but if he starts doing Author's Notes like this
one and switches to science fiction, I'm gonna beat him up after school.
~~~

1.10 - THE ZYMOBIUS FILE


Guided by Minder, Evan zipped through the skyscrapers towards the
spaceport.  He hadn't seen a single corporate car since jumping back down
onto the gravway and making his exit.

The siren on the police cruiser tailing him was a different manner.

"Minder," he said, "let 'em know I'm coming, and trouble's coming with me."

  * * *

"Boss, they're stalling us on our lift-off clearance."

"That's okay, Meicross," Scott said as he climbed back down the ladder
from the flip room.  "I expected them to, even here."

"Why are you requesting clearance?" OJ snapped from his seat.  "Evan's not
here yet!"

"Because if we were to wait for Evan to arrive," Scott explained, "it
could still be hours before we get the clearance, and by then your friends
at BoTan will have figured out where you are."  His feet hit the deck.
"Let me take my crack at them."   He ducked through the hatch to the
cockpit.

"This your first time flyin', OJ?" Meicross asked.

"Yes.  I'm a little nervous about it."  He grinned nervously.

"Don't worry about it.  Scott and I have logged enough light years
together in this old bucket to cross the galaxy and back.  Trust us.  We
know what we're doing."

OJ relaxed a little and smiled.  "Okay."

"Just stay out of our way."  Meicross patted OJ's knee, and his smile
faded.  The pilot walked back to the cockpit.

  * * *

"This is Scott_Quinn, owner of _Daybreaker_.  Why are we not cleared to
leave?"

A female metallic voice intoned, "One moment please," before a real
human's voice declared, "_Daybreaker_, this is the Tower.  We're having a
bit of a delay in processing your departure."

"What's the delay?  I have a client on another planet who is expecting me
in a few days.  I don't intend to keep them waiting because of your
bureaucracy."

"Sir, I need to process your duty and business fees before I can allow you
to depart."

"What duty fees?" Scott demanded.  He heard Meicross enter the cockpit
behind him.  Quickly, he called up the relevant passages from the
planetary laws he had ready in his mind.  "I've made three purchases while
I was on the planet:  a meal in a restaurant, a rental car, and a parking
lot fee.  All tolled, these are well under the threshhold for duties in
the time I've been here."

They went back and forth for several minutes, quoting rules and regs at
each other.  Civil servants tended not to have implants, and Scott
probably now knew the Halvaga Code better than his adversary had after
decades of working with it.

The spaceport tower toady was saying, "I cannot comment on any basis we
may have for thinking you weren't truthful with us.  I haven't even
*implied* that we suspect you of any impropriety--"

"You just wish to delay us for *no* reason, then?"  Scott went on before
she could deliver a comeback.  "Look, I've travelled space enough to know
when I'm being stonewalled."  Meicross tapped his shoulder and pointed at
one of the monitors.  Minder was giving a status report:  Evan had
accumulated too may demerit nominations getting to the spaceport, and had
attracted the local police.  "I'm a data consultant.  I know your system
chapter-and-verse, and if I wanted to cause you trouble with your
supervisor, I know exactly how I would go about it.  Push us through.
Now."  He closed the connection.  "Shit," he said.

"Should I start pre-launch, boss?"

"Yeah, you better.  We're not getting offworld any official way now.
Ganymede, open the cargo hatch and relay a message to Minder:  Evan better
get his ass here ASAP, or I can't guarantee any of us are leaving.  And I
have no qualms about leaving him here."

  * * *

If Evan hadn't ever been a corporate thug, he thought, he would never have
wound up on Halvaga III in the first place.  He wouldn't need rescuing,
and his would-be rescuer wouldn't be threatening to lift off without him
if he didn't make it to the port on time.

Then again, if he hadn't been an observant and resourceful thug, he would
never have known about handy little things, like the Jynx on his airbike.
The cops that were now tailing him, sirens ablare, will have already
hammered on their kill switch, a device which would ordinarily cease all
function in a vehicle they were pursuing, and discovered that it wasn't
working.  The perp was Jynxing it.

Stuck at an impasse, a healthy number of black-and-whites were now chasing
Evan towards the New New Orleans spaceport, just like in the good old days.

The gravway opened up into a more traditional, physical roadway, leading
up to a taxi drop-and-ride and a parking terrace.  Evan jumped the curve,
and slowed his escape, in deference to the high volume of pedestrians
around.  The police cars behind him squealed sideways to a stop and
several officers, all with cyborg implants to spare, piled out to give
chase on foot.

The airbike slalomed expertly among the people as they either gawked or
jumped out of the way.  Evan yelled up to Minder, "Tell them I'm on my
way!"  Fortunately for all concerned, the doors at the spaceport's
entrance were standing wide open, and Evan merely had to duck to get
inside.

Evan had never hung around inside the spaceport much.  He'd wanted to
leave the planet too many times and too badly to tease himself that way.
Now this was a liability because he had no idea which way to go.  He
pulled up in the middle of the main lobby and looke around. "Minder,
direct me!  I need to--"

>Straight ahead.  Projecting a map onto your viewscreen now.

Evan looked down at his dash, and there was his route, all picked out for
him.  "I gotta get me one of you," he said and peeled out across the
carpet just as the cops entered the building.

>The police are drawing their weapons, Minder warned him.

Evan zigzagged through the port, trying to frustrate the cops by putting
as many innocent bystanders between him and them as he could.  He supposed
they figured there were far fewer people in here to sue them if a shot
went wild.  Evan knew that if they could get a bead on him, it would be
all over.  Depending on how badly they wanted him stopped and what sort of
weapon they were using, *he* might be all over.

Evan's sidewinding didn't slow him down too much, and he reached Customs
at a good clip.  He winced.  Who knew how much trouble he'd get into if he
didn't stop.

Customs was prepared for such an eventuality, and the agent
on duty had seen Evan coming.  She stared into her screen as the airbike
whizzed past and she analysed the findings with her finger on the security
button.  No plant matter, no drugs, and amazingly, no weapons.  She
twitched her finger off the keypad, surprised that the hooligan wasn't a
violator at all.  Then the police came sprinting through with their stun
guns held high, and when she finally hit the call button, seven kinds of
hell broke loose.

Evan was past all that, though.  Once you got out of Customs, it was a
short trip outside.  He looked down at his dash to see where he had to go
next.  He didn't know why he'd assumed that the doors at the other end of
the building would be left open too, but he was wrong.

"Shit!"  He pulled himself into a skid and slammed sideways into the
double doors.  They swung violently outwards and one of their windows
shattered.  The airbike pinwheeled some and screeched at the indelicate
treatment.  One fender scraped against the ground.  He recovered quickly
and zipped off in the direction Minder said was his destination.

"What am I looking for here, Minder?  What does your ship look like?"

>Disc, 38 meters tall, and yellow.  Less than 800 meters away.

With far less to crash into out here, Evan felt safer taking his eyes off
where he was going and tried to spot the ship.  After a moment, he spotted
it.  "That's it there, isn't it!"

>Correct.

The ship rose into view like a monument, a grubby testament to humankind's
conquest of space.  Evan thought it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever
seen.

>The cargo hatch is open and waiting.

"Will I be able to drive up and into it?"

>If necessary.

"I'm taking no chances."

  * * *

"Hey, boss!" Meicross called out from the hatchway to the cockpit.
"They're threatening to shut us down!  Is this Evan guy here yet?"

All of _Daybreaker_'s occupants felt a slight rocking as something heavy
lurched up the cargo ramp.

"I think so," Scott said.  "Ganymede, status, please?"

>Minder and Evan are on board.

"Close hatch, and Meicross, get us the hell out of here."

"With pleasure, boss."  He turned around and activated the engines.

  * * *

Evan lay back on his airbike in near-darkness, his arms and legs splayed
out around him, and his breathing heavy.  I did it, he thought.  I'm
finally going to get my ass off this rock.  I'm going to get myself some
money, and then I'm back in business.

A sharp honking noise brought him out of his daydream.  He jerked upright
and looked around.  "What the hell was that?"

>That was me.  You must leave the cargo bay immediately.  We are preparing
to leave the atmosphere and this area is not equipped with life support.

"What?!?"

>I have been trying to warn you for the past minute and thirty--

"How do I get into the living space?!"

>Follow me.

Minder floated off to one side and Evan could make out the thick wire
rungs of a ladder projecting from the wall.  Evan started to run towards
it, but he lost his footing when the ship shuddered.  He landed chest-
first on the smooth, metal floor.

'That would be lift-off,' he thought as he tried to recover his breath.

Minder contacted Scott to let him know that Evan was in trouble.

"Damn," the data miner muttered as he unstrapped himself from his seat.

"What's wrong?" OJ asked him.

"Evan's got himself stuck.  We can't leave the planet until he's up here
with us."

Scott moved as quickly as he could towards the cockpit and opened the
hatch.  Meicross looked back in shock when he heard the door open.
"Evan winded himself during take-off!  Keep us at this orientation until
I tell you."  Meicross nodded and looked back to his controls.  Scott
backed out of the hatch and pulled up a trap door in the floor.  "Evan?"
he yelled down.

Evan had almost gotten back onto his feet but needed to brace himself
against the floor with his hands still.  He looked up to see a man's
silhouette in the hatch in the ceiling.

Scott wasted no time in climbing down the ladder.  Down was easy.  Right
now _Daybreaker_ was moving straight up and they were in the bowels of the
ship.  The G forces were pushing them towards the floor.  Scott came up
along Evan's side and helped him upright.

"Come on.  My pilot can't turn until we're at the ladder."

Evan nodded his understanding.  They could only go up so far before they
ran out of atmosphere, and then they'd start to freeze, asphyxiate, or
both.

Together, they lurched towards the ladder, and when Scott had his first
hand on it, he relayed the command to change course through Minder and
Ganymede.

"Hang on tight!" Scott said as Evan gripped the ladder.  The world turned
to the side, and both men's legs swung out from under them.  They hung on,
and wound up diagonal to the wall.

Evan looked back at his airbike and saw that, miraculously, it was where
he parked it.

"It's maglocked!" Scott explained.  "Now forget it and get up the ladder
before you kill us both!"

Evan reached up for the next rung while Scott pulled Evan's legs up to the
ladder with a free hand.  Evan looked down to find his footing and saw
that Scott had his feet under the bottommost rung.  He started to climb,
carefully.  The ladder wasn't that long;  it was the intensified gravity
and crazy angle that were slowing him down.  The pilot must have still
been in a turn because Evan's body shifted gradually over the ladder until
the ladder seemed horizontal to him.  He took advantage of it while he
could and crawled as fast as he could towards the hatch.  Scott followed
close behind.

Evan popped his head out of the hatch.  Evan's floor appeared to be a
wall.  He looked around to find the floor and saw OJ in the adjacent
corner.  His chair had already turned in preparation for zero-grav and
now, from OJ's perspective, Evan appeared to be emerging from the top of
the wall above him.

Scott gave him a hard shove on the ass to get him moving, and Evan
scrambled out of the hatch.  He joined OJ.  According to the current
direction of gravity, he had to assume the classic astronaut's position:
lying on his back on the backrest, with his legs and feet in the air over
the seat.  'I miss space travel,' he thought.

Scott sealed the hatch and opened the intercom to the cockpit.  "All
clear," he reported.

"Boss, some planes are coming up on us now.  What should I do about them?"

Scott said, "Given Evan's adventures, they're likely to be armed _al
dente_.  Evasive action."  Evan glared up at Scott over the double slam,
but he wasn't paying attention.

"Check," Meicross said and cut the intercom.

OJ kept his eyes closed.  He thought he heard some shots fired, but wasn't
sure that the noises weren't something else.

Suddenly, he said, "Oh!  I get it.  Armed 'to the teeth'!"

"Shut up," Evan told him.

Within a few minutes, Scott had come over and strapped himself in beside
his passengers. First they cleared the atmosphere, then the gravity well.

Meicross' voice came over the intercom once more:  "We are now free of
Halvagan space."

Evan cheered, but OJ felt a little sad.  He'd been born on that planet,
and while it really wasn't such a great place to be living, he'd never
considered leaving.  Now he'd left his home with only a couple of changes
of clothing.

_Daybreaker_'s Centripetal Gravity had reasserted its control over the
ship and Scott unbuckled himself.  He stretched and said, "You two sure
know how to make a take-off exciting.  OxygenJim, welcome to space."

The mail chime sounded.  "Oh, I wonder who that could be," Evan said.

Evan and OJ freed themselves of their seats and followed Scott over to the
computer terminal.  Scott read the headers.  "Play new message."

An official-looking person appeared on the screen.  "Mr. Quinn of
_Daybreaker_, you have been found in violation of our planetary laws.  Not
only have you left the spacedock without proper clearance, but we believe
you have given passage to a fugitive from justice who was fleeing from our
police even as you lifted off.  As a preliminary measure to protect our
citizens, we have placed your name, and the names of your passengers, on
the list of--"

"Haha!" Evan crowed.  "We've been exiled!"  OJ paled, and Scott shushed
him.

"--you wish to contest this finding, you may contact any constellationary
office on an affiliated planet.  If you decide to pursue this--"

"Stop message," Scott commanded.  The image returned to Scott's screen-
saver.

Evan was still laughing.  "We're not going to miss you either!"  OJ
muttered something to himself, which only Scott heard.  "I'm going to
check my mail to see if I got exiled too."

Evan reached for the console, but Scott slapped his hand.  "Don't touch.
You don't have the clearance yet, and it's not worth the trouble for you.
I'll go over here and give you access to basic systems, while you, Evan,
should ask your friend to repeat what he just said.  OJ, have a seat right
here."

OJ took Scott's seat at the terminal without any fuss.  He was so
distraught, he hadn't even noticed the furniture was right-side up again.

"OJ, what's wrong?" Evan asked.

"I'll never get to go home again.  I'll never see my *family* again!  And
my job-- my god, I can't just pick up and leave!  What am I going to do?"

"Hey, hey, it's going to be fine.  You'll get to talk to your family
again.  They can't block you from communicating with the planet, no matter
what they said."  Evan crouched down in front of OJ and looked into his
tearing, green eyes.  "I always said you were too good for that place.
You don't belong there.  Hell, no one belongs there.  The place was a
dump.  Every time I said I was going to go, didn't you secretly wish you
could come with me?"

"For a vacation!  Not... sneaking away after being chased by the police
and being told you couldn't come back!"

"How do you know you can't come back?" Scott interrupted.

OJ said, "You heard what the commissioner told you: 'the names of your
passengers' will be placed on the shit list.  Passengers, plural!"

"Are you so sure they know who my passengers are.  They didn't mention my
pilot, for example."

"I told them I was coming to your ship.  They should know where I am."

"Only if they bothered to log the information," Scott said reasonably.
"I've found Customs agents can be sloppy that way sometimes.  The only way
to know for sure is to check your mail and see if you've been notified."

"He can't," Evan said.  "He doesn't have an off-planet mail account, and
your access to the Halvaga II internet will be blocked."

"Not *my* access, it won't," Scott countered.  He turned back to the
terminal he was working on and tapped his touchpad a few times, and after
a moment, the Halvagan mail server access screen appeared.  "Go ahead.
You're cleared."

OJ quickly logged in and brought up his inbox.  There were many new
messages - he hadn't checked his box in days - but none from the
commissioner.

Evan smiled.  "It would have arrived by now, sonny boy.  They don't waste
time.  Uh, can I...?" he asked, pointing at the terminal.

Scott closed himself out, and gave Evan guest access to the web.  The
purple-haired man jumped into Scott's seat while Scott went over to where
OJ was.

Scott laid a hand on OJ's shoudler.  "He's right.  It will be okay.  If
they don't know you're on board, they're not going to know until you fail
to file taxes one year, or until someone reports you missing.  The thing
to do now, then, is get in touch with your place of work and your people
now, before any of that happens."

"But what will I tell them?"

"You really need a vacation," Scott said.  "I can tell.  You look
exhausted and very unhappy."

"If *he* hadn't gotten me into this mess," OJ said, pointing, "I wouldn't
be either exhausted or unhappy."

"And this is important because?"  OJ paused.  "From what I understand, you
couldn't tell anyone you were disappearing, so no one knows what
happened.  Contact your place of work first, and tell them you're taking a
few weeks because you desperately need them.  Tell them you've already
left so there can't really be an argument."

"But what if I can't come back?"

"Worry about that later.  Right now, you need clothes, any money you may
have left behind, and you'll have to see to any houseplants or pets you
may have left behind.  That's why you're calling your family next."

"Gods," OJ whispered and leaned forward onto the desk.

"Who's a close family member who can ship you something if you need it?"

"Okay.  Call your brother and tell him the same story.  Let him talk to
the rest of your family.  The fewer people who can talk to you right now,
the better.  Once you figure out what comes next, then you can tell them."

OJ sighed deeply.  "Alright."

"And if you need anything, just ask, and I'll do what I can.  We'll get
you a web mail account you can access from anywhere just as soon as we get
to a planet."

"That reminds me," Evan said, "which planet are we going to?  You said
you'd take us only to the next one you went to."

"I have business on Panopia.  We'll be going there."

"You're kidding!  OJ, we're only a few days away from the gayest pleasure
planet in the galaxy!"

  * * *

END OF FILE